Landmines

Growing up, when talking to my father, at the corner of every sentence it felt like there could be a landmine.

The trouble is, these landmines were so well hidden.

I might be walking around the house on a fine, sunny day when I’d utter something and observe my father’s cheek flushed with red, and I’d know that I did it.

I said it.

He was about to detonate.

His heavy hand would swing across my face.

I knew it.

I activated something unknown, hidden deep within him.

I stepped on that damn landmine again.

I survived it, though. 

And through trial and error, I have learned which pathways were safer to walk.

Even though I am here now, without visible scars or missing body parts,

Still, pieces of me are forever lost.

No one survives a landmine entirely in one piece, just as no one survives war without a scar.